The present invention relates to an adjustable stabilizing bracket for use in designing and constructing an outdoor A-frame style type play gym, swing set, or play set, of the type often found in the back yard of homes, especially those with small children. The bracket is designed and constructed to allow the home owner to personalize the A-frame design, which may be further modified to include such features as swings, teeter totter boards, elevated platforms, slides, etc., where the selected features will depend on the ages of the children to be using same. One disadvantage with a fixed bracket may be found when the erection site is not level, i.e. uneven terrain. An adjustable bracket, such as proposed by this invention, allows the owner to compensate for uneven ground for the personalized A-frame system.
Most of the back yard sets that are found in residential neighborhoods are commercial systems available in many retail outlets and typically consist of an A-frame formed of tubular products, with swings and a teeter totter board suspended from a cross member of a tubular configuration. Further, such commercial systems are held in place with either complicated braces or just simply nails. These fastening mechanisms can lead to instability that may result in injuries or potential dangerous conditions. In any case, personalized systems are not commercially available, and should one design an individualized system, little help can be found from the commercial outlets in finding the fastening members and supports that are needed.
What may be available in the prior art are limited in the freedom to design a personalized system. Several patents from the prior art are found in the following U.S. Patents:
a.) U.S. Pat. No. 6,527,232, to Robertson et al., discloses an A-frame bracket having a rectangular top, and two rectangular side walls that each extend at an angle downwardly from the rectangular top, wherein each side wall has an integrally formed flange forming an “L”-shaped wall for receiving wooden legs that form an A-frame. A disadvantage of this bracket is that it is fixed and not amenable to positioning the A-frame on a grade or uneven terrain.
b.) U.S. Pat. No. 5,364,312, to Cunard et al., relates to a kit for assembling wood legs to form an A-frame to support the end of a cross beam for a children's play gym that includes a trapezoidal frame bracket to connect the upper ends of the legs to each other and to the cross beam and a special frame brace for reinforcing that connection which will accommodate a tubular metal cross beam or a cross beam consisting of a single board or a plurality of boards. The frame brace has a generally rectangular top wall and a pair of laterally spaced apart side walls extending down from the top wall at an angle such that the side walls have more or less the same slope as the side edges of the frame bracket. Portions of the frame brace top wall define a first set of holes spaced apart along the longitudinal centerline of the top wall, there being two such holes in the first set and a second set of holes containing at least two holes spaced along the top wall on each side of that centerline. There also may be a third set of holes containing at least two holes spaced along the top wall on each side of the centerline and being displaced from the second set of holes. The kit also includes fasteners arranged to extend through the first set of holes into the cross beam when the cross beam is a unitary member and through the second and third sets of holes into the cross beam when the cross beam is of wood so that the same hardware can be used to construct play gyms having a variety of different type cross beams.
c.) U.S. Pat. No. 4,966,309, to Baer, teaches a kit for assembling timbers into a play structure. The kit includes a frame bracket which has a frame segment joined at a right angle to a beam segment. The frame segment has four nail or screw holes and the beam segment has two nail or screw holes. The beam segment has a square bolt hole for receiving a carriage bolt. The frame segment is adapted to joining two timbers into an A-frame so formed to a transverse overhead laminated beam. The kit also has a frame brace with a body plate having a flange joined to it at such an angle that when the body is placed flat on the A-frame, the flange lies flat on the beam. The frame brace has nail or screw holes and bolt holes in both the body and the flange. The kit also contains rectangular flat beam clamps adapted to attachment across the laminations of the beam so as to restrict the separating of the laminations. The beam clamps have at least two nail holes and a central bolt hole. The bolt hole being circular on the beam clamp for use with the frame bracket and oblong for use with a swing hanger.